


Three Weeks

by sonictrowel



Series: Long Night in the Blue House [58]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 12:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11313537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonictrowel/pseuds/sonictrowel
Summary: It was three weeks til last Christmas; three weeks til dawn.River and the Doctor hadn’t been sleeping much, the past few months.  They spent all of Athena’s waking moments with her, and all of her sleeping moments alone with each other.  To waste more of that time being unconscious than the scant minutes they absolutely needed seemed absurd.





	Three Weeks

[Darillium]

It was three weeks til last Christmas; three weeks til dawn.

River and the Doctor hadn’t been sleeping much, the past few months.  They spent all of Athena’s waking moments with her, and all of her sleeping moments alone with each other.  To waste more of that time being unconscious than the scant minutes they absolutely needed seemed absurd.  

They’d run out of the words to express anything about the situation.  Anything they could say to each other was inadequate to convey the needed love or hope or comfort; meaningless in the shadow of the looming end.  

No, not the end.  Not forever.  But for how long?

They took the direct route instead, minds and mouths and bodies reaching silent understanding through touch.  River was blissfully enfolded in the Doctor’s embrace, his kisses soft and warm and sweet as their lips met again and again, her eyelashes fluttering as they brushed over his cheek.  His hand tangled in her hair and his mind pressed forward, filling her head with a wordless swell of emotion, and rolled slowly back, pulling her thoughts along with it; a gentle tide ebbing and flowing between them.  

His other hand gripped her hip as their bodies began to instinctively sway with the motion of their thoughts, pressing in and rolling back in synchrony.  River’s lips parted against his as she drew in a breath, and his tongue followed after, twining tenderly around hers as they melted further into each other.  She stroked the backs of her fingers down the side of his face and ran her thumb over the line of his jaw, before sliding both hands into his unruly hair and slinging her leg over his hip.

That was when the cloister bell began to toll.

They broke apart and stared at each other for a moment, frozen and wide-eyed.  The next coherent idea broke over the entangled threads of their thoughts simultaneously: _Athena._

They were up and across the room in a moment.  The Doctor’s side of the bed was closer; he opened the door to Athena’s adjoining room to see her already walking toward them, sleepy and stiff-legged in the starlight, rubbing a little fist into her eye.

“Daddy?” she mumbled.  “What’s Gran want?”

River stepped forward and scooped her up, tugging her wrist away from her face before kissing her cheek.

“It’s probably nothing, kitten,” the Doctor said, flashing a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and exchanging a look with River which suggested he feared otherwise.  “You know, she just likes to keep us on our toes sometimes.”

They met Nardole in the hall, bleary-eyed in his dressing gown, trailed by Vincent, who was twitching his tail in irritation.

“What’s got her so bothered?” Nardole asked, nodding his head in the direction of the control room.

“Not sure,” the Doctor mumbled, looking uneasier by the moment.

“Why don’t you go with Uncle Nardole, honey?” River said, smiling at Athena as she lowered her to her feet.  “Maybe you two can have a midnight snack while we see what Gran is up to.”

Nardole beamed at Athena and held out his hand.  With a last suspicious look in the direction of the control room, she nodded and took it.

“I know just the thing,” Nardole said cheerfully as they walked away with Vincent in tow.  “Found a cabinet the other day with a great big stash of all these little holey biscuits with jam in.”

The Doctor gave River a weak smile and took her hand as they headed for the linen cupboard.

“We’re assuming it’s something bad,” she said as they approached the console, “but it wasn’t bad last time.  Last time I was pregnant.”

He squeezed her hand and said nothing.

“You still think it’s something bad.”

“It’s just… timing,” he said.  “Everything worries me right now.  It’s probably fine.”

They both went for separate monitors and scanners.

“I don’t see anything,” River said, feeling increasingly unsettled; usually she knew what the TARDIS wanted.  “Maybe it’s some kind of… extra-early warning?”

The cloister bell continued to ring.

“That’d be a first,” the Doctor scoffed.  “Usually it’s just a little bit too late to be of any use.”

“But I’m not reading anything out of the ordinary.  No unusual approaching ships, no temporal anomalies or energy fluctuations, just… perfectly normal boring Darillium.  What else could have her so upset?”

The Doctor’s eyes suddenly met hers, distorted through the time rotor glass.

“What.  What’s that look?”

He glanced down at the console and scrubbed his hand through his hair as River circled round to meet him.  “There’s something else that can cause the bell to ring,” he mumbled.  “The High Council.”

A cold wave of dread washed over River’s body.

“They can make every cloister bell in every TARDIS ring at once.”

“What, and call every Time Lord in the universe home to supper?”

“That’s just the thing,” the Doctor said, his voice soft and low.  He dropped his hand from his hair, leaving it standing on end in every direction.  “They’re still parked at the far end of the universe.  Last I knew, the only ones who aren’t at home are Rassilon and the High Council, because I turfed them out.  And me.”

“Well, they’re— they’re out of the time lock now, aren’t they?  The war’s over, the planet’s back in this dimension.  They could be calling from any time.”

He shook his head.  “Not likely; not Gallifrey.  First Law of Time, you stay chronological with other Time Lords.  With all Time Lords.  It’s most important not to cross your own timestream, but you don’t cross others’ at the wrong time either, if you can help it, or else you get… well.”  He met her eyes and smiled a little as he gestured vaguely around him.

“Right, better not visit the motherland, then,” River replied, her voice strained with forced levity.  “Seems I’ve made a bit of a mockery of their legal system.”

“Making mockeries of legal systems is one of your finest qualities, dear,” the Doctor said, his expression fond and sad.  “But you can see how untenable that type of timey-wimey chaos would be on a large scale.  I should’ve taught you more about Gallifrey.  I just… never thought it’d be relevant,” he said, smiling ruefully.  “—Oh, and you’ve been, actually.  Spoilers.”

“Lovely, so I’ve that to look forward to,” River sighed.  “So, what do we— hang on a second.”  

The incessant _bong_ ing was driving her absolutely mad; she couldn’t hear herself think.  She squeezed her eyes shut and thought: _We’ve got it, thank you, Mother_ — _please be a dear and shut up._

Her ears rang in the sudden quiet as the bell finally fell still.  The ship hummed indignantly.

_Sorry._

“Well, obviously I’m not fucking going,” the Doctor said, answering her unfinished question.  “I don’t even know who’s on the Council now, if the old members came back or a new one was formed.  I don’t even know who’s President.  I sort of… couped and ran.”

“Of course you did.”

“But whoever it is, we know they haven’t let the Hybrid thing go.  We _don’t_ know if they know about the kids yet, or when or where they get their bloody idiotic ideas.”

“But we know none of us are together after tonight,” River said softly.

The Doctor stepped up to her side and wrapped his arm around her, pressing a kiss to her temple, and rested there with his cheek against her head as he let out a heavy breath.

“What do we do?” she whispered again.

“If they want to talk to me, they can fucking phone me, I’m not going to answer their damn summons bell.  And in the meantime—” he suddenly released her, ducked under the console and yanked down the huge lever there in one smooth motion, the lights instantly draining from the rotor as the hum of the engines dimmed to silence.

“Siege mode?!  Is that necessary?” River hissed.

“River,” the Doctor muttered from where he had sat unceremoniously on the floor, staring down at some vague point in the near distance, “they can take control of her.  They can remotely fly her back to Gallifrey with all of us onboard.”

“Shit.”  She lowered herself onto the floor beside him.

“I haven’t had to worry about that in a very long time.  But they can’t move her if all her flight systems are disengaged and every shield is up to prevent any temporal influence getting through.  We’ve still got power to the basic life support systems, heating, lights, water, food storage.  The rest has to stay shut off until…”

“Yeah.  Until it’s time to... go.”  

“Yeah.”  The Doctor swallowed audibly.  River reached over and squeezed his hand.

“Three weeks.  We have three fucking weeks left and I am not letting them take _a fucking minute.”_

“I know, darling.”  After a heavy, quiet pause, she sighed.  “I don’t think I much like Time Lords.”

“Bunch of pricks,” the Doctor wearily agreed.

 


End file.
